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Since the early days of the pandemic, clinicians and researchers have been looking for alternatives to nasopharyngeal swabs. While samples collected from swabs are considered the gold standard in terms of generating accurate results, these tests require more supplies, place health care workers in closer contact with potentially infected individuals, and are difficult to scale up for mass testing. Saliva has been put forth as a low-cost, easy alternative, but it’s efficacy and accuracy remain points of contention.
Even as large universities have begun rolling out ambitious, saliva-based initiatives on campuses across the United States, private companies looking to develop rapid, in-home diagnostic tests have moved away from such tools. Trials of saliva-based testing being deployed in the field have yielded mixed results, and it remains unknown under what conditions saliva is most useful or how best it can be rolled into the existing testing framework.
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